Fighting Boeing and SpaceX: Why the West is begging Russia not to impose a ban on titanium exports
https://inf.news/ne/tech/f381b8129b9e735bdb893a7d5c290cb0.html
The loss of such a decision may be much higher than previously thought. In fact, entire space industries in unfriendly countries may be on the brink of extinction.
On April 13, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, who had previously suspended services in support of Aeroflot, called on Western countries not to impose an embargo on Russian titanium. In his view, this will not hurt Russia, but it will endanger the European aerospace industry.
Titanium supply ban in 2022
According to analysts, Russian company VSMPO-Avisma supplies up to 30 percent of the titanium supply to the global aerospace industry, including up to 40 percent for Boeing, up to 60 percent for Airbus and up to 100 percent for Embraer. Spanish company Aernnova Aerospace also bought Russian titanium, which in turn supplies it to a number of companies including Elon Musk's SpaceX. According to Roman Gusarov, head of the industry portal Avia.ru and an expert on the Transport Committee of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Guillaume Faury's statement made Western politicians want to hear him , apparently unaware of the real consequences of such decisions for the European economy.
Here we are interdependent and mutually interested in the fact that the West does not follow this path (the path of the embargo. - about life). At Airbus, two-thirds of its planes are built with Russian titanium, while at Boeing, every third plane is built with Russian titanium. Can you imagine the volume? That said, almost half of the world's new civil aircraft are made of Russian titanium.
Fighting Boeing and SpaceX: Why the West is begging Russia not to impose a ban on titanium exports
Roman Gusalov
Airbus' chief executive said the company's short- and medium-term titanium needs were met by inventory reserves. He also added that the company started looking for alternative titanium exporters. But is it that easy to find them?
Titanium has been produced and processed in Russia since 1957, when the first titanium ingots were smelted in the furnaces of a factory in the town of Salda in the Upper Urals. It's 65 years of continuous production, a detail-to-detail process, huge capacity through multiple modernizations, a complete and efficient supply chain. Building such a production from scratch would cost billions of dollars. Today, the city-forming enterprise of the world's largest titanium producer, VSMPO-Avisma Corporation, is located in Verkhnyaya Salda. As of February 2022, 90% of Russia's titanium is produced there and exported to at least 50 countries around the world.
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